I love teaching and learning with young children, this is where I share my ideas.

Welcome to Paula's Preschool and Kindergarten! My class blog is the place I share information about some of the fun learning activities we are doing at school. I hope to provide parents with insight into what we are doing, and why, and to share ideas with other early childhood educators. Please don't use the photos or text of this blog without permission, but please do use any ideas you find useful. Thank you for stopping by!

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

TPT Seller Challenge Week 1: Makeover Madness (and a SALE!)

For the next 4 weeks I'll be participating in a TPT Seller Challenge, hosted by 4 great bloggers (see their links at the end of this post).

This week's challenge is to take a product, and make it even better. I'm really excited to participate, because that's exactly what I've been working on for the last 6 weeks or so.

Over the last year, I've made 38 sentence picture match activities - wow! When I first began making them, they were 10-12 pages, included 12 sentences and pictures to match, 1-2 vocabulary pages, 1-2 follow up worksheets, a leveled list of sight words used, and of course, directions. They make awesome reading centers, and when I taught kindergarteners, they LOVED them.

Recently I decided to add a little more to my sentence picture match sets, and I've been working at it. My current and revised sets have 18 sentences and pictures to match, including more diverse reading levels, so teachers can choose the sentences that are just right for each student or reading group, challenging but not overwhelming readers with different skill levels. I've also been enlarging the graphics to make them more appealing to kiddos, adding thematic writing paper, and a greater variety of worksheets that cover even more skills. I think these are good changes!

One of my sets that I needed to update was this one:

Looking back at it, I wanted to make the vocabulary pages more appealing, so I added a border, spread the vehicles out, and enlarged them. I also added a page of road signs.

Next, I added 6 more sentences and pictures, including a couple of questions. The extra sentences added the following words: this, police, trash, green, have, you, ever, been, in, taxi, cab, some, call, these, love, bugs, five, road, signs. Many of these are sight words, but others are transportation vocabulary words, and are included on the vocabulary posters - supporting students as they decode each sentence. The enhanced vocabulary pages also work well with the thematic writing paper I added. I chose to use a fire truck picture on the writing paper, so it can be used with a transportation, community helpers, or fire safety theme.

Here is the resulting update:

What do you think? I'm really happy with the improvements, but I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions. Is there another skill you'd like to see added to my sentence picture match sets, or maybe a theme you think I should make a set for? I am open to your suggestions either here on my blog, or at my TeachersPayTeachers store.

As part of the makeover challenge, I'm putting this product and all 38 of my sentence picture match activities on sale for the next 4 days, through Friday June 19th. If you are a bargain hunter (and who isn't?!) you may want to consider getting my other sentence picture match products at lower prices before I update them. You can always re-download for free on TeachersPayTeachers, getting improved products at no extra cost! To find out if any of your purchases have been updated, go to the My Purchases tab. Updates will have a red message below them that says Newly Revised Re-download.

About Me

I've been teaching early childhood since 1993, when I started teaching first grade in Arlington ISD. From 1999 to 2014 I ran a preschool from my home, and I added kindergarten in 2011. I closed my school when my family relocated to California, and now I create teaching products to share via TeachersPayTeachers. I cannot imagine my life without teaching, learning, and young children!